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“Jefferson and the Gun-Men” by M.R. Montgomery

By: LC200 staff

When I opened the cover of this book and began reading, I thought I had become very confused and turned on the television to Fox News. Author Montgomery brought his 30 years of journalism experience with him when he prepared this book. As typical, he has played fast and free with historical fact so as not to let mere facts interfere with unearthing a good story.

Auspiciously, he is recounting the early development of the American West from the time of the American purchase of Louisiana through the Wilkinson/Burr plot to create an empire by seizing Spanish controlled Mexico and western North America. He includes the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Zeb Pike’s exploring trips as part of what was going on at the same time. The conclusion is supposed to be that this plot never got off the ground and even if it had, world political forces and events prohibited it from ever happening.

The author does not try to give a daily account of events on the expeditions. He prefers to summarize things and keep several storylines going; each exploring trip and activities of Hamilton, Burr, Wilkinson and Jefferson. To his credit the book moves along well and he manages his storylines well enough to maintain the reader’s interest. But the reader very soon sees that things are not quite right for a non fiction book about a segment of our history. This writer makes broad conclusions but gives only part facts. Such things as Lewis could hardly stand the sight of Charbonneau. He relates that Clark said Charbonneau had struck Sacajawea and he had rebuked him. The next sentence starts off with “The battered Sacajawea..” He has twisted the facts of the history by selecting only the phrases he wants that he becomes totally farcical. In addition he puts words into peoples mouths and thoughts into their heads that are virtually impossible to know to be the truth; “the men speak of the boat with contempt when Lewis cannot hear them.” He also gets his facts totally wrong in some places. He refers to the Hidatsa landmark for Great Falls as the eagle’s nest in a towering cottonwood tree that projected above the Missouri River canyon. He also states Drouilliard was promoted from enlisted soldier to translator and hunter. A final example is the author refers to William Biddle as the editor of the first journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Most of the historical documents related to this Expedition give Nicholas Biddle this credit. And so the mismash goes as the author paints a picture of the Expedition, Jefferson, the military and the government as bumbling idiots barely capable of doing the most basic activities.

He finally gets around to stating his real thesis when he reports on Jefferson’s speech to a number of visiting Indian chiefs. One of the chiefs responds to the speech by asking Jefferson if the United States is so numerous and so peaceful and so just why doesn’t the Great Father use some of his gun men to keep the white settlers from stealing Indian lands? We have no clue if this question is historical fact or the product of this journalistic sleuth.

His second and primary thesis is the last paragraph of this book, “You could remove all of them from history (Burr, Wilkinson, Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Pike) and things would turn out very much the same. America would still reach from sea to sea…picks and plows far outweigh guns and glory. Work defeats adventure every time.”

I have not commented on the “historical facts” relating to any other aspect of this book except the Lewis and Clark Expedition because I do not consider myself qualified to critic those other areas. But the twisting of the Lewis and Clark facts in addition to those he just plain gets wrong are frequent enough and severe enough that the veracity of the entire publication is put into serious question. Furthermore, since the basic building blocks, facts, are at best highly suspect, the resulting conclusions, or theses, can hardly be accepted as viable. The bottom line is this book becomes another typical media product that starts with an opinion then takes the time, place, and facts of history and twists them beyond acceptability. The author adds important errors of fact that make the entire piece questionable. He may say many things that are right, but because he also said many things that were wrong, we simply throw the whole thing out. Once the author is through reshaping and creating facts of history he then uses his new product to prove his preconceived opinions. This book is definitely not a keeper for anyone interested in factual history of the United States.

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